Thursday, October 25, 2012

CSI Miami: Heat Wave Game Review

This is a review of a game on Facebook. I am being paid for this review, but all opinions are my own.

Anyway... I had the chance this past week to play CSI Miami: Heat Wave Game on Facebook. I am actually a relative newcomer to Facebook, but not to gaming. I have played around with computer games, both online and off, for many many years (I still remember games where you had to change out the floppy disk to load a new level!).

As well as being a player of games, I am also completely addicted to police procedurals on television. The original CSI is one of my faves, and while I didn't watch CSI Miami, I am aware of the basics - Cute lead CSI guy named Horatio who wears shades and says the cool lines.

So, with a background in games, and in police procedurals I am not sure what exactly I expected from a police procedural game, but I do know I kinda like what I got. CSI Miami Heatwave has nice graphics (my niece declared all the characters look like bobble heads!), it has the ability to customize your character, and it sets clear goals for what you should be doing... no wandering around wondering what is next!

You start each case with Horatio - he will tell you about the case, make a witty comment, and don his shades! Then you start collecting evidence at the crime scene!

Once you have collected the evidence, it is back to the lab to process it! You gather supplies from the various machines to help with this.

As you process evidence, this leads to suspects. You get to pick the best question to ask them to either reveal new suspects, new places to search for evidence, or to make them confess to the crime!

During each case, there a side goals like finding certain items at a scene, or expanding your lab, or buying new equipment. So, lots to keep you moving and playing!

One thing I struggled with at first was getting to places at the edge of the screen. I eventually found that I could click and hold on the ground and drag things into view, but this wasn't intuitive like most of the controls. Kinda annoying, but not a deal breaker.

Overall, I found this game to be a nice little time killer. It was something I could play in small chunks or large chunks depending on how much time I had and I like that. In the words of my friend Matthew, I give this 3.5 out of 5 slices of meatloaf.